Chapter 2
Curtis
“My boy’s home!”
I turned toward my dad and chuckled as he slapped my back and threw his arms around my shoulders. I hadn’t been called a boy in longer than I could remember.
“About time,” someone yelled out.
“No shit,” Dad said as he let go of me and moved around the table.
“Nomad no longer,” our VP, Grease, added with a grin, leaning back in his seat.
“Hear, hear.” My twin brother, Draco, bumped my shoulder with his.
“Good to be back,” I announced, smiling.
It had been a long fucking road. I’d been sent to Montana at twenty-one years old, green as fuck and gung ho to help the club. A few months, the president had told me. A longer job, but nothing crazy. Now, eighteen years later, I was finally back for good.
It didn’t feel real.
I listened in on the meeting as the officers went over garage numbers, bonuses—that I wasn’t going to get because I hadn’t been there—and other various information about club business, but I wasn’t paying close attention.
I was waiting for a phone call, so I had half an ear to the door, listening for a ring.
I’d spent a lot of time wishing I was back in that room.
I could’ve closed my eyes and recognized every single voice in there.
They were as familiar to me as my mother’s.
Our president, Dragon, who was my maternal grandfather.
Our Vice President, Grease. Our treasurer and my paternal grandfather, Casper.
My pop. My brother. My uncle, Leo. Too many cousins to list. I belonged in that room.
I’d known the Aces and Eights MC was my future since I was old enough to understand what it was.
But even though standing against the paneled wall with my brother was the first time that my homecoming felt real, I was still itching to get the fuck out of there.
When church was over, I was the first out the door, snagging my phone off the bar top.
“He check in yet?” my brother Draco asked, grabbing his own phone.
I shook my head and checked the time, fighting the urge to call.
“He will,” Draco said easily.
“Your mother wants to know when you’re comin’ to dinner,” my dad interrupted, catching up with us. His hands came down and gripped the backs of our necks like he had when we were just boys.
“I was there night before last,” I replied, glancing at him.
“Well, she’s got a lot of time to make up for.” He shook us gently. “Wants both of you there.”
“All right.” I nodded and checked my ringer. It was still on.
“I’ll tell Kara,” Draco replied as we came to a stop in the forecourt. “The girls are done with softball, so our schedule just opened up.”
“Fuck, I missed the season,” I murmured. I loved watching my nieces play ball. I’d been able to manage a few games over the past couple of years, but it wasn’t enough. I’d missed most of their lives.
“You’ll be here next year.”
“Home for good,” my dad said with a sigh, shaking his head. “Fuckin’ finally. You find a place yet?”
“Not yet.” I glanced over my shoulder as men filed out of the front door, headed to the connected garage. “Tommy’s gonna show me some places next week.”
“You thinkin’ of buyin’ or rentin’?” Dad asked.
“Rentin’ for now.”
“You should take the rental that’s in our neighborhood,” Draco said, looking up from his phone. “Yards are big, houses aren’t too close together, and you can babysit for us.”
“Curt,” Grease called from the door to the clubhouse. “Come here a minute.”
“Shit,” Draco said, raising his eyebrows. “You’ve been here a week. How’d you already get called into the principal’s office?”
“It’s a gift,” I joked as I moved back toward the building.
Inside, Grease waved me toward the little room we’d just left. I tightened my hand around the phone in my fist, then set it back on the bar as I passed. Phones weren’t allowed in church. Ever. It didn’t matter why you were in there.
Inside, both of my grandfathers were sitting at the table. Most days, I was proud that I was Aces on both sides of my family, but at the moment, it just felt like a pain in my ass. If the two of them had been accountants, I could’ve spoken to them with my phone in my hand.
“How you settlin’ in?” Dragon asked, turning to face me.
“Still sleepin’ on Draco’s couch,” I said with a smile, looking over my shoulder as Grease and my dad stepped inside behind me and closed the door. “Not settled yet.”
“When’s Dylan get here?” Casper asked, gesturing for me to sit.
“He’s on the road,” I replied, dropping into the chair across from him. “I’m waitin’ on his check-in.”
It felt weird to sit there. I didn’t have a seat at the table yet. During church, I usually stood along the wall with the other members who weren’t officers.
“We won’t keep you long,” Grease said, moving to his own seat.
“What’s this about?” I looked around at their faces. Thankfully, no one seemed pissed.
“Got a job for you,” Dragon said.
“Please fuck, don’t tell me you’re sending me out of state,” I joked, running my hand through my hair.
No one laughed, and my gut fucking sank.
“Not long term,” my dad said from his place beside me.
Yeah, that’s what they’d said eighteen fucking years ago. I kept my arguments behind my teeth and waited for someone to explain.
“You remember Harv down in Sacramento?” Casper asked. “Died last year?”
“Vaguely,” I replied. From what I could recall, he’d been a good friend to the club and had a hand with custom shit like I’d never seen before or since. He’d slowed down by the time I was old enough to appreciate it, but a couple of the boys still had his mods on their vehicles.
“He was a friend to the club,” Grease said, reaching up to scratch his cheek. “Reached out before he passed and called in a marker.”
“And you’re just gettin’ around to it now?” I asked dubiously.
“Didn’t see a way to repay it until now,” Grease answered flatly. “He’s got a daughter, Theodora. She’s in deep down there. Had a son with Mike Granger.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered. Mike Granger had died three years before. He’d been a supreme asshole, and he’d been that way because he could. His fuck of a father controlled 75 percent of the drug trade through Sacramento, and what he didn’t control, he still had his fingers in.
“As you can imagine,” Grease continued. “Harv was concerned about leaving her.”
“With good reason.”
Grease nodded in agreement.
“From what we’ve gathered, the Granger family keeps a loose hold on Theodora and her kids. Don’t get up in her shit, but make sure that she remembers they’re there.”
“She work for them?”
“Unclear,” Grandpa Casper said. “But she claims she hasn’t done any work for them in the last five years.”
“You’ve been in touch?”
“We’ve reached out,” he confirmed.
“We need you to go down,” Grandpa Dragon announced. “Drive her and the kids back up here.”
“Quietly?”
“Semi.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“That means,” my dad said, turning toward me. “She’ll be ready, but she can’t look like she’s fleein’.”
I just stared at them.
“She’s not escapin’,” Grease said quietly, watching me closely. “Yeah? Nothin’ to escape from. She’s just movin’ to Oregon to be near her man.”
It took longer than it should’ve to realize what he was saying.
“You want me to play house with this woman.” My voice was flat.
“We need to get her the fuck out of California,” Grandpa Casper said. “And we can’t give the appearance that we’re poachin’ her.”
“Of course not,” I replied sarcastically, keeping my voice just this side of respectful.
“You’ll take the bus down tomorrow. She’ll pick you up at the station, and you’ll drive them to Oregon.”
“Then what?” I asked. “We make it to Oregon without problems, then what? Not as if the Grangers don’t have eyes here.”
“Tommy’s gettin’ your place ready today,” Dad said. It was the apology in his voice that made the situation clear.
“You want me to live with her?” I blinked in shock. I’d been asked to do a lot of things for the club. I’d broken more than a few laws. I’d cleaned up disgusting messes. I’d taken my brothers’ backs even when I wasn’t sure they were in the right. But this? Fucking insane.
“For a while,” Grandpa Dragon confirmed, like it was any other job. “Give it a few months. After that, you two go your separate ways. No one will think anything of it. Didn’t work out, nothin’ to write home about.”
My mind spun. I didn’t even know what this woman looked like, how old she was, or what her kids were like. I’d just barely gotten my feet under me again. I was still getting used to working in the garage. I’d been living out of my duffel.
“My son is gettin’ here tomorrow,” I said through gritted teeth. “What am I supposed to tell him?”
“That you and Theodora have been in touch for the last few months and decided to make a go of it now that you’re back in Eugene.”
“He’s never going to believe that shit. He’d have a pretty good idea if I was seein’ someone.”
“He doesn’t have to believe it as long as he keeps his mouth shut.”
“And as long as that’s the story he repeats if anyone asks,” Grease said.
“You think someone’s gonna be asking my boy questions?” My gut clenched.
“Could happen,” Grease replied. “But I doubt it. Granger steers clear of kids.”
“He’s seventeen years old.”
“That’s right. He is,” Grandpa Dragon said firmly. “You’ve been in Montana for eighteen years. Agreed to that because you knocked some woman up and you didn’t want to leave your kid. Understood that. Felt for you. Let you have it.”
“And I appreciate it,” I gritted out through my teeth.
“You’ve been skatin’ far longer than any other member would be allowed,” he added. “Now, it’s time to pay the fuckin’ piper.”
He opened up a file and slid a photo toward me.
It was candid and clearly taken without the subject’s knowledge.
The woman in it was walking across a parking lot, pushing a grocery cart.
She was petite with long brown hair that was pulled back in a low ponytail, wearing a pair of denim cutoffs and a gray tank top.
She had a tattoo that I couldn’t make out covering her shoulder, down her arm to her elbow.